Monthly Archives: February 2019

I’m a bit late with my January blog because…

I am not making excuses already…

My Writing Life

Guess what? A couple of weeks ago, Mike Barlow, the editor of Wayleave Press came to my door with a big brown cardboard box containing 145 copies of Testimony, my brand new pamphlet. There is nothing that cheers up a wet winter day like a new publication arriving with a man in a cardboard box!

The official launch is in March here in Lancaster. The last three months has been busy editing with Mike, a hugely pleasant and interesting experience, and now it is here! Forgive my giddiness; this does not happen that often. My last pamphlet was July 2015.

Then this last weekend off we went to Northern Ireland to celebrate two birthdays, a ninetieth and a sixty fifth. The second involved staying at the River Mill, a lovely writing retreat and centre just outside Ardglass in County Down. Six of us spent two nights there joined by a seventh on the Saturday. Apart from birthday celebrations for my friend and fellow writer, Yvonne Boyle, we had a small reading on the Saturday night at which Testimony made its debut and was well received.

So my writing life has been very eventful just recently. I have, however, managed so far to keep up my New Year promise which was to try to write a poem each week, and this is my first blog of the new year, and my other promise of a blog post a month is so far fulfilled. You’ll know later on in the year when I stop mentioning them that I have let  these promises slide! Today is Chinese New Year so welcome the year of the pig, which according to Google symbolises;

luck, overall good fortune, wealth, honesty, general prosperity, a hard-working, a peace-loving person, a truthful, generous, indulgent, patient, reliable, trusting, sincere, giving, sociable person with a large sense of humour and understanding.

Well in our present political position we could all do with a lot of those!

My Reading Month

Recently I have enormously enjoyed Barbara Kingsolver’s latest novel, Unsheltered, bang up to date and a mixture of wit and politics. Currently I am enjoying the Philip Pullman’s La Belle Sauvage, the first volume in his trilogy The Book of Dust.

 Hare in the Headlights

The big one is the official launch of Testimony coming up on March 2nd with guest poets Yvonne Boyle and Jennifer Copley and harpist Celia Briar, and the beyond that the reading for Brewery Poets in May. There is also the possibility of a summer workshop or two at Ambleside, as I heard yesterday that Learning Plus has got the funding to run a series.

So off I go, 2019 is off to a busy start..